


capsize (first in the water)

by franticatlantic



Category: Bandom, Fight Club (1999), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Abuse, Depression, M/M, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 06:26:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8275970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franticatlantic/pseuds/franticatlantic
Summary: Tyler’s not here. Tyler went away. Tyler’s gone.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [profanando](https://archiveofourown.org/users/profanando/gifts).



> This is an ode to Fight Club.
> 
> Title is from the song 'Capsize' by Frenship.

No one ever means what they say.

It happens in all sorts of generic ways - your parents tell you they’ll love you forever and then kick you out when you’re old enough, your best friend will say one thing to your face and then turn around and say quite another to someone else, someone says Donald Trump has offended them and that they’ll vote for Hillary Clinton now, but they won’t.

Then there are the specific ways in which it manifests itself. Maybe your girlfriend tells you ’til the end of the line’ and then cheats on you with that best friend who always used to say stuff behind your back. Maybe someone promises you something and then breaks that promise, sends you packing back to the parents who don’t want you anymore.

For Tyler, it starts with a set of rules.

-

The most important rule is that you can’t talk about it. That’s not his rule, it’s Blurryface’s.

And someone broke that rule. Actually, they did more than break it. They took it out into the street, laid its face against the concrete, and curb stomped the fucking thing. Then, as it’s teeth scattered all over the pavement, they shot it in the back of the head.

The stupid dumb fuck who couldn’t keep his mouth shut is the reason Tyler’s currently at the top of a skyscraper strapped to a dusty office chair with a pistol in his mouth.

_With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels._

-

Tyler meets Blurryface in a bar on the South side.

That’s not really where they met, not even where they had their first words. Blur had been with Tyler for a long time before that.

Sometimes Tyler thinks Blurryface was there when his mom gave birth, and then just followed them home from the hospital. When he was nine and had his first thought about possibly jumping from the windowsill or finding the biggest knife in the kitchen and sliding it across his throat, Blur had slinked out from the shadows.

He’s been here ever since.

But the bar on the South side - a really shitty, divey place with cigarette smoke lingering under the lights and a jukebox that seems to play strictly Dolly Parton - is where Blurry finally made himself known to everyone else.

He orders a drink and sits down across from Tyler and he looks every bit as Tyler always imagined he would.

Blurry stretches one black hand across the grimy table, sleeve of his pristine white jacket riding up to reveal yet more black. His red eyes flash. “ _It could be worse. A woman could cut your penis off while you’re sleeping and toss it out the window of a moving car_.”

Tyler sets his beer down slowly, feels Blur’s grip on his arm. Tight almost to the point of being painful. But not quite. “ _There’s always that_ ,” he says, and Blurry lets go.

Yellowed teeth gleam in the blue light flashing above the bar - a sign for Pabst Blue Ribbon - and Blurry’s eyes glow red. “Take me outside, chump.”

-

When Blur tells Tyler to hit him, he does so. In the ear.

Blurry never said he’d hit Tyler back, but he does. In the nose.

Blood spurts out and sprays all over the front of Tyler’s Mickey Mouse shirt. “Dude,” Tyler says, and his voice is muffled and nasally, “I think you broke my nose.”

Blurryface laughs. “Shoulda known this was your first fight.” His voice is low, like someone turned the pitch way down on his vocal chords. Like something is wrong with it.

It kind of puts Tyler at ease.

He collapses on the back stoop of the bar, swills his beer. “Never said it was my first fight.”

“Ya didn’t have to, chump. I know a lot about you.”

Tyler spits a glob of phlegm and blood onto the cracked asphalt of the parking lot. The light over the door behind him casts his shadow long and distorted over the ground. He doesn’t see Blurry’s shadow. “Why do hipsters only drink Pabst Blue Ribbon?” He asks.

“Are _you_ a hipster?”

“I don’t think so.”

Blur sits beside him, red eyes unblinking. “What’s that in your hand?”

A beer, Tyler thinks. A PBR. “Oh.”

He laughs - manically - and so does Blurry, high and low mixing and intermingling and wafting out into the night. It’s a little cold, and Tyler didn’t bring a jacket.

Like a loaded spring, Blur reaches out and hooks an arm around Tyler’s shoulders, fists his other hand into the front of Tyler’s blood-soaked shirt. Chunky bits of ruby red snot squish out from between his fingers and Tyler goes limp against his shoulder. “You need me, kid.”

-

They fuck that first night.

Blurry drags Tyler to the edge of the bed and slaps him.

Tyler whines and lets Blur shove him to his knees, lets him push the head of his cock against the back of his throat.

He gags and tries to brace himself on Blurry’s thighs, but Blur growls, yanking hard enough on his hair to make his eyes water. “Hands behind your back, slut.”

Tyler almost pukes.

Drool trickles down his chin as Blur fucks him and he’s gripping the sheets of his creaking bed so hard he’s afraid he’ll rip holes in them. Blurry is biting the backs of his shoulders, digging his nails into Tyler’s hips.

Then he wraps a hand around Tyler’s throat and growls something into Tyler’s ear that Tyler doesn’t quite catch.

When they come, they come together. Blur rubs his chin against Tyler’s arm and some of his shadows come off with it.

“Good fight, pup,” Blurry snarls as he smacks Tyler’s ass.

-

At the club, Blurryface stalks the outer edges of the ring. He never fights - that’s one of his rules.

No, he leaves that to Tyler.

Tyler, who enjoys the flat, hard packing sounds of skin on skin, the way his head rings when his opponent lands a solid hit.

The way Blur presses his fingers into Tyler’s bruises when they fuck.

When Tyler fights, he’s scrappy, using his small size to juke around the other men and slam his fists into their sides or their legs. He loves being able to look up from a victory, see a black and white blur beyond the muted faces of the other club members.

Red eyes flash at him from a canvas of rough, slate gray concrete and God knows what kind of shit scrubbed on the basement walls.

He grins with a mouthful of blood.

-

Jenna cheated on him a year ago to the day.

Well, she had been doing it for a while. But it’s been a year since Tyler found out.

He didn’t find out in any dramatic way, didn’t walk in on her boning some random guy, tits bouncing, shouting someone else’s name.

He got a text.

He was wrapping up his shift at the restaurant, collecting grimy dishes and half-eaten food and his phone buzzed in his pocket. In the back hallway, he saw it was from Jenna herself.

_I’ve been cheating on you._  
_With Mark._

The bitch didn’t mince words, that was for sure.

Moving her stuff out of Tyler’s apartment was the most awkward part. Tyler sat playing Xbox while Jenna and Mark took all that was Jenna’s out to Mark’s truck.

After they left, Mark with a “Hey, man…” that was met with a deadeye stare from Tyler, the apartment looked a lot bigger without her things in it.

Perfect for Tyler to scatter pieces of broken beer bottles on the floor and walk over them.

-

Tyler meets Josh at the laundromat.

He’s already been eying the guy with the cerulean hair out of his peripheral for a few minutes when the guy turns to him.

“Get in a fight?” He’s staring at Tyler’s bloody clothes, crusty and smelling like old pennies. He’s beautiful, sharp teeth poking out through the hint of a half smile.

The guy has a pile of dried underwear in front of him, he’s folding a pair of pink briefs.

“Something like that,” is Tyler’s response.

The guy sticks his hand out, colorful tattoos snaking their way up his arm. “I’m Josh.”

“Tyler.” When he shakes Josh’s hand, he’s not sure he’s ready for this much color in his life.

But he does love the way the magic peach color of Josh’s cheeks turns a deep red when Tyler asks if he’d like to go out some time.

-

He takes Josh to the nicest restaurant he knows of in Columbus. The man who seats them is a guy he knows from fight club. Michael, maybe? Matt? Marcus?

Doesn’t matter. What matters is the look that passes between them, the secret they share.

“Did you know that guy?” Josh asks when MikeMattMarcus walks away.

“Nope,” Tyler lies. “Why?”

“Just seemed like it. Sorry.” Josh goes pink, rubs a hand at the back of his neck.

Tyler reaches across the nice tablecloth and grabs his other hand, squeezes gently. “You don’t have to apologize.”

The action takes Josh by surprise, pretty eyelashes fanning out against his skin as his eyes go wide. Tyler’s no less taken aback. He didn’t even know he had something like that in him anymore. “S-So, what do you do?”

“I’m between jobs right now,” Tyler lies again.

“You must have done something pretty fancy before to be able to afford this place.”

Tyler’s never had a ‘real’ job in his life - Blurry always liked him best when he was down on his luck.

After dinner, he drops Josh off at his place and they kiss on the front stoop. Tyler’s hand is curled around the back of Josh’s neck, fingers inside the hood Josh has had up since they started walking home. Josh’s hands are so gentle on Tyler’s waist - they don’t grab or pinch or even try to pull Tyler closer.

And when they pull apart, Josh heads inside with a small wave. They don’t have sex and Tyler walks home with a very warm feeling growing in the pit of his stomach.

-

Blur is waiting for him when he gets home.

Two red dots are glowing in the dark of the kitchen.

Nothing happens when Tyler flicks the light switch. Power’s out again. He moved into this giant abandoned house on the outskirts of town when Blur convinced him to move out of his apartment in Parkville.

It has its charms. The fact that they can’t ever seem to keep the power on isn’t one of them.

“Where have you been all night?”

Tyler shrugs. “Out.”

As he lays his jacket across the back of a chair, Blur sets on him with a hand around his neck and a leg between his thighs. “Don’t lie to me. I can smell him on you.”

Josh smells like cookies baking and fresh Spring flowers.

Blurry gnashes his teeth and rakes his nails across Tyler’s shoulder. Cookies and flowers are replaced by burning and rotten fish.

Blur fucks him within an inch of his life, slaps him and chokes him and holds him down. He squeezes his black hand so hard around Tyler’s cock that Tyler thrashes his head from side to side and cries.

“You don’t get to come tonight,” Blurry says after he’s finished.

Tyler can’t do anything but nod and turn his head slightly to the side, tongue lolling out of his mouth. His face burns and his nipples ache from when Blur twisted them.

“Whore,” Blurry snarls, and the blow he gives to the side of Tyler’s head knocks him out.

-

That night at club everyone shies away from Tyler and his fat black eye.

It makes him happy that no one wants to fight him. They all know he’s the best fighter here.

Finally a tall, sinewy guy with bleach blonde hair steps forward. He’s bigger than Tyler, but not by much.

As the group roars around them, Tyler beats the guy to the ground, then climbs on top of him. He gives a few more licks to the guy’s back, then grabs the bright blonde hair and smashes his face against the floor. Then does it again. And again, and again.

They put cardboard down when they scrap. One whole corner is soaked in crimson by the time someone pulls Tyler off.

The blonde guy is facedown, not moving, as one of the guys checks his pulse.

On his part, Tyler is rocking in the corner, lip split and one of his teeth cracked.

Blurry comes to stand before him, arms crossed. “ _Where’d you go, psycho boy_?”

Tyler looks up, mesmerized. “ _I felt like destroying something beautiful_.”

-

“Where do you get all these…injuries?” Josh is concerned, worry etched into every line on his face.

His eyes crinkle with distress as he hands Tyler an icepack and tends to his split lip with antiseptic. Tyler barely winces as the burn sinks deep into the cut.

He shrugs. “I’m small, Josh. People on the South side think they can pick on guys who’re small, that I’ll be an easy fight.”

Josh sounds amused when he says, “And are you?”

Tyler doesn’t answer.

Josh sighs. “You should move out of there, into a better neighborhood. Where did you say you live, again?”

“Specifically? South Linden.”

There’s a hum as Josh presses his lips tenderly to Tyler’s forehead.

Josh’s apartment is much nicer than the house where Tyler and Blurryface live. He gives the room a once-over before crooking his arm around Josh’s waist and pulling him close.

Josh’s hands are in his hair, trailing down the back of his neck when he says, hushed, ”Tyler…would you like to make love?”

Tyler’s never heard it called that before, even when he was with Jenna.

Instead of answering, he discards the icepack and drags Josh down on top of him.

“You taste like alcohol,” Josh giggles when they kiss.

“It’s all that shit you put on my lip.”

“The _disinfectant_? Don’t you ever take care of yourself when you get hurt like this?” Josh pulls back to look at him sadly, worrying a chunk of Tyler’s hair between his fingers.

Tyler shrugs, braces for Josh to start pulling. But he never does.

He takes Tyler’s clothes off slowly, wraps his mouth around the head of Tyler’s cock first. Tyler’s back arches so hard it feels like it’ll break. He tries to say something, but all that comes out is a strangled moan.

Josh pulls back, skims his hands up Tyler’s thighs in a way that makes him shake. “This isn’t your first time?”

“Um,” Tyler hacks eloquently.

 _First time like this_ , he wants to say.

But Josh shushes him, and then they fuck.

 _Make love_ , Tyler has to remind himself.

He keeps waiting for Josh to hit him, to choke him, to scratch him at the very least. That’s how these things are done. That’s how Blurry always does it to him.

Rather, Josh smiles a lot, kisses Tyler in places he’s never been kissed before, holds him close with one hand as he makes him come with the other.

They lay in bed for an hour afterward, making out and rubbing their legs together.

Josh asks Tyler if he wants to stay over.

Tyler declines and goes home to Blurryface.

-

Josh shows up at the house one day. He only rings the doorbell once and when Tyler opens the door he’s down on the lawn surveying the front of the house.

Tyler leans against the doorframe and shakes his head. “Blur must’ve told you where I live, huh?”

“Who?” Josh takes the steps two at a time, puts his arm around Tyler’s waist and dips him for a deep kiss. Tyler squeaks and cups Josh’s jaw in both hands.

When they pull away, Tyler’s head feels fuzzy. He actually stumbles back across the entryway and Josh has to catch him, laughing steadily as he does so. “Y’wanna come in? It’s kinda a mess in here, though…”

Josh kisses Tyler’s cheek. “‘Course I wanna come in.”

They lay in Tyler’s bed kissing lazily for the next two hours, talking about everything and nothing. Josh doesn’t say much about the state of the place. Tyler’s just glad he didn’t decide to stop by during one of their frequent bouts of not paying the bills.

Josh brushes his thumb across the abrasion on Tyler’s cheek. He’s so exhausted from club last night that he falls asleep almost as soon as Josh starts playing with his hair.

He wakes up groggy from his nap to the sound of the mattress creaking in Blurry’s room. Someone’s whimpering quietly. Tyler rolls over to have a laugh with Josh, but Josh isn’t there.

Padding into the hallway, he rolls his eyes at the room across the hall and then goes downstairs, where the sounds are muffled. He thought he’d find Josh down here getting a drink or helping himself to Tyler’s leftover Chinese in the fridge, but he’s not here either.

Through the kitchen window, he sees that Josh’s car is still here.

He looks slowly upward, to the muffled sounds of sex. The floorboards in the house are so old that every squeak of the bedsprings sends a shower of dust down onto Tyler’s shoulders.

Steadily, he heads back up the stairs, hand sliding up and along the bumpy railing. He stops outside of Blurry’s room and listens. The creaking has gotten louder, but the whimpers are the same. He reaches for the door handle, but then there’s a choke and a _flat, hard packing sound_ that Tyler would know anywhere and everything stops.

A few seconds later, the door flies open and Josh hurries out holding his face.

“Josh?” Tyler’s voice is weak - he’s not even sure if Josh hears him as he hurries down the stairs and out of sight.

Turning, he sees Blurry in the doorway, white pants unzipped and slung low on his hips. He’s lighting a cigarette, eyes hooded until they flash up to meet Tyler’s gaze. He takes a long drag and blows the smoke in Tyler’s face. “You didn’t need him anyway, kid.”

The sound of Josh’s car starting up interrupts his fits of coughing.

Doubled over, Tyler thinks.

_I am Jack’s broken heart._

-

Blurryface is right - Tyler doesn’t need Josh. He has fight club.

He has the way the ring of men expands just enough to let Blur in and then closes back behind him.

He has Blurry’s first official fight, his shadows shifting and dancing in the one dim yellow light that hangs from the ceiling.

He has Blur’s legs bracketing his, holding his thighs together as he pummels Tyler’s face into a soft sponge.

He has the visit to the hospital at 4 in the morning.

He has two shattered teeth and a broken jaw.

-

Blur digs holes in the backyard all day.

Tyler wakes up sore and aching.

They sit on the back patio drinking beer and smoking a pack a day.

“ _I’ll bring us through this_ ,” Blurry tells him. “ _As always. I’ll carry you - kicking and screaming - and in the end you’ll thank me._ ”

-

He hasn’t stopped thinking about Josh since the night he caught him and Blurry fucking.

He knows Blurry’s right - he doesn’t need Josh.

But he wants him.

So he drives across town to Josh’s place, heads up to his apartment and knocks twice.

Footsteps and then Josh in the crack between frame and door. It’s been weeks since he’s seen Josh and he still has the hint of a black eye.

They stand there, silently taking in the others’ butchered faces. Neither says a word.

Until Tyler clears his throat. “Can I come in?”

“Why?”

“To talk.”

Josh sticks his lower lip out, and Tyler can hear the cogs in his brain working. “Okay. But if you touch me or come too close, you have to go.”

Tyler doesn’t understand this, but he agrees anyway.

Josh’s apartment is fancier than Tyler’s house, but he’s mentioned that before so he doesn’t say it again. What he does say is, “Didn’t you like me?”

Josh laughs humorlessly. “I have no response to that.”

Biting his lip, Tyler crosses his legs. “I’m sorry he hurt you.”

There’s a look that appears on Josh’s face after Tyler says that, one of confusion laced heavily with disgust. “He who? _You_ did this to me, Tyler. Stop acting like you didn’t.”

Time slows down, stops, and then speeds back up again.

Josh always topped when they made love, except for that one time. The one time Tyler climbed on top of him and turned their love making into fucking. The time he shoved his hips against Josh’s with hardly enough lube and swung his fist at Josh’s face as he came.

“I’m sorry.” Tyler’s voice sounds smothered, because his lunch is crawling its way up his throat. He sees nothing but black and blue and magic peach behind his eyelids. “I have to go.”

“Wait, Tyler, I just-“

Josh’s gentle hands try to stay him, but Tyler’s skin burns where Josh touches him.

On the sidewalk in front of Josh’s apartment complex, Tyler throws up. It drips down his chin and splatters onto the concrete. It’s black and bubbling and eating through his shoes.

-

Tyler meets this guy at the laundromat.

He doesn’t have blue hair or eyes that crinkle when he laughs. He isn’t folding a pair of pink briefs and he doesn’t have any tattoos.

He glances at Tyler’s pile of bloody clothes and smirks. “Get in a fight?”

As if in a dream, Tyler turns to the guy and exhales through swollen lips. “You ever heard of fight club?”

-

So yes. _He’s_ the stupid dumb fuck who couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

 _He_ broke the most important rule, pulled the trigger and watched its brains exit out the back of its head.

Blurry was always willing to kill for that rule. It’s a wonder he hasn’t done the same to Tyler yet. But no, he seems to take too much pleasure in pushing the gun to the back of Tyler’s throat and seeing him gag.

Behind where Blurry’s crouched in front of him, the city lights blink and shimmer against the black satin backdrop of the night sky.

Blur yanks the gun from Tyler’s mouth and hits him with it, hard, at his temple. “Focus, bitch. Almost time now.”

Blurry flicks his wrist, checks a watch that isn’t there.

Tyler’s own watch is tick ticking away where his arm is taped to the chair.

When Blur turns to saunter to the window, Tyler struggles at his restraints. He hears more than feels a piece of duct tape rip loose near his ankle. He glances up to see if Blurry noticed. Blurry, who’s making lewd gestures with the gun and pacing back and forth in front of the open window.

Tyler gets his feet free, then his wrists, and as he’s working on peeling the tape from his chest, Blurry barrels into him, knocking the chair over and Tyler with it. The force with which he tips Tyler over rips the rest of the tape from the chair, leaving Tyler free to flop over and attempt to crawl away.

“No, you don’t,” Blurry snarls, digs his nails into Tyler’s ankles and hauls him back across the dirty floor.

Blurry flips him over, arm raising to backhand him across the face. But Tyler catches both of his wrists, struggling with a grunt to try and buck him off.

In the scuffle, Blurry manages to push Tyler back up against the cool siding of a metal desk, hands at his shoulders. The gun goes off, a slug grazing Tyler an inch over his left eye and tearing off a chunk of skin with it. The bullet pings off the desk and strikes Blurry in the chest, pulling him backward as he drops the gun, which clatters a few feet away.

Blurry howls in pain, black hands clawing at his torso, white suit jacket turning red from the center out.

There’s blood running down into Tyler’s eye as he stands and grabs the gun, turns it on Blurry.

Sharp teeth make themselves known as Blur laughs, blood bubbling up and pooling at the corners of his lips. “You can’t kill me, chump. You need me. Don’t you get that yet? You fuckin’ _need_ me!”

Tyler swipes the blood from his eye, smearing it down the side of his face. He tucks the gun into the waist of his pants and kicks Blurry hard in the side. Blur rolls once toward the window and then again when Tyler lands another kick. And again and again and again, until Blurry is up against the wide panel showcasing all of Columbus.

He hacks a bloody cough as Tyler raises the gun, pulls the trigger and shatters the window. Glass sprays on the floor, cuts Blurry’s face and his hands where he’s curled up against the now-open window ledge.

Wide red eyes glance up at Tyler, black tongue licking out over the pointed teeth. “You need me,” Blurry whimpers pathetically.

Tyler exhales slowly and eyes the gun in his hand.

Then he sticks his foot out and gently toes Blurryface over the edge.

He’s losing a lot of blood and can’t make it to the elevator or even the stairwell on the other side of the darkened office.

So he sags against a desk and holds his hand to his forehead, feels blood leaking out from between his fingers. He’s probably nicked an artery and will bleed out on the 14th floor of an abandoned office building very soon, but he’s calm.

As everything starts to sway and he’s having a hard time drawing breath, he hears the elevator ding.

“Blur?” His head is all muddled, upside down and inside out.

There are hurried footsteps, a hand on his shoulder, an arm around his waist. Whoever it is is half-carrying, half-dragging him back toward the elevator.

Tyler’s eyes are closed, he’s swimming through stars. Whatever body part his head lolls against smells like cookies, though. And flowers blooming in Spring.

“How’d you know where to find me?” He asks, though he’s not sure the words come out as he intends.

“You texted me,” Josh says, and lets Tyler sit on the floor of the elevator as it starts sinking to the ground floor. “You need help, Tyler.”

“I can explain.” Tyler struggles to open his eyes and when he does there’s magic peach skin and sea foam hair in front of him. He must be covered in blood by now, but Josh still pulls him close and holds him as he calls 911.

 _No one ever means what they say_ , he thinks, just as he sees flashing lights and hears Josh breathe a sigh of relief.

And in some cases, that’s okay.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Ana. Without her, Blurryface would never have made an appearance in this fic.
> 
> I have [Tumblr](http://vintagetyler.tumblr.com/).


End file.
